trouble with back to my mac on mavericks

OS X: Using and troubleshooting Back to My Mac with your iCloud account

Pretty much the same issue, except diffent hardware. Trying to get to my 2011 mac mini from 2013 MacBook Air. Was working great 100% of the time in Mountain Lion. After upgrading to Mavericks, the attemped connection just times out. Router is an Airport Extreme, on the latest firmware. No other changes to hardware or software, just an OS upgrade.

I have the same issue and the only work around that I have found is to go into System Preferences/iCloud and uncheck Back to my Mac. Wait about 10 seconds then recheck it, allow the service to restart and then try to access the remote computer. This almost always works for me but you have a narrow window. If you wait to long then you cannot access the remote computer. It seems that whatever service is started by back to my mac soon stops after you check that box and will no longer connect to remote computers. This problem started the day I upgraded to Maverics. I have one computer that is still running Mountian Lion and I can connect to that one no problem, but any computers at home running Mavericks is problematic.

It has been my experience that this issue only effects computers that are NOT on your LAN. If the connecting computer is on the LAN then this seems to work without issue.

I second davetb1466's experience - exactly the same for me. I cannot use BTMM off LAN without turning BTMM off then on again. Definitely caused by Mavericks install. Anyone have any ideas?

Thought i would add this in here as i may / may have not found a solution to this issue but it seems to work for me now.

When BTMM stopped working i also noticed that i was having issues connecting with my apple id to machines even if they were on the same local network. I found a way to resolve this and consequently BTMM has started working again for all of my machines.

I think this has something to do with how the apple id is assigned to your user account but let me go through the steps i took for this:

1) Open 'System Preferences'

2) Click on 'Users & Groups'

3) Unlock the padlock in the bottom left corner to make changes

4) Select your user account from the list on the left

5) Right click on account and select 'Advanced Options'

6) In the 'Aliases' box at the bottom you SHOULD have two records (your apple id and another beginning with com.apple.idms.appleid) remove these both and click Ok.

7) In the right hand window on your user account click on 'Change' next to the apple id box.

8) Delete the apple id associated with the account and click 'Done'.

9) Now click 'Set' next to the apple id label (where it just said Change a minute ago)

10) Enter your apple id and password and click ok.

11) After a few minutes the machine should be available again for remote connection and desktop sharing via BTMM. You can always perform a reboot just to be sure.

This should take a few seconds to set and once you have then you can verify this has been set correctly by right-clicking on your user account and selecting 'Advanced Options' to see if it has put the two records in the 'Aliases' box at the bottom.

Needless to say you need an active internet connection for this as it fetches your associated record from your account and aliases it for you.

Perform this task on all the machines that you want to run BTMM on and see if that helps 🙂

I hope this helps someone as i was searching for ages for a solution to this and, up to now, this seems the only way to get it working.

Regards

A

Totally did the trick for me - many thanks andijames! After logging out and in (probably a couple times) from within the iCloud pref pane, I followed the logout/login path of andijames instructions and voila!

Followed andijames instructions to the letter and it seems to be working for me. Thank you andijames for the laser specific directions!!!

Cheers.

I have multiple accounts on my mac with different apple ID. They all fail to work on this Mac and had been working even under Mavericks for quite some time. Then they all suddenly stopped working. I followed the instructions on each account and then tried connecting again. NOTHING. It hasn't fixed or changed my problem in any way. I know I did it exactly as described above and saw every as was indicated.

There must be crucial part missing for my situation...

I only started using BTMM after the Mavericks upgrade and for a while all worked fine, but recently I can only connect occasionally. I came across this thread this morning after BTMM failed to connect again and used the work around suggested by davetb1466 which has worked.

As I'm working remotely I can't try the andijames fix but will look at this when next in the office on the Mac I'm connected to. On the remote Mac I don't have any aliases records showing so wonder if that might be part of my problem?

My fallback solution is using Logmein which always works but I prefer the easy of things like dragging files between machines that BTMM givess me.

I have been having this issue as well.. I have fixed one of the 2 computers. There were no aliases in the Advanced section of the Users & Groups. Following the instructions from andijames worked great and the aliases were created. When I get home, I will do the same there as well and see if it doesn't fix it completely!

I will report back.

Thanks!

I have the same problem, with the same fix: turn off BtMM from the iCloud preference pane. But the strangeness is that after roughly 45 minutes, the connection dies. To re-establish the connection, I once again have to turn BtMM off and back on again. It's as if a keepalive is not being sent, so the connection eventually times out.

I had the same problem after Mavericks. Both my Retina MBP and my 2007 iMac wouldn't connect. I tried everything to get BtMM working again, but no luck. As a last resort I backed up both computers, wiped the drives, and installed a clean version of Mavericks. This worked, until I restored my iMac with Time Machine. Then the issue was restored as well. So if you want/need BtMM to work, try everything listed above before trying my solution. It's a difficult process getting each individual file out from a backup.

I have had this BTMM problem since upgrading to Mavericks. The only way I can get BTMM to work is to uncheck and recheck BTMM in the iCloud control panel. I have tried all of the solutions mentioned in this thread with no help. Constantly resetting BTMM is a pain in the a#s. I have solved the problem by forwarding port 5900 on my router to the computer that I want to access. On my remote Mac, I use ScreenSharingMenulet to set the IP address of the router (or dns address). This works 100% of the time. If you go this route, though make sure that your base computer has screensharing set to require a password or you are opening up your computer for nefarious actions. I will await a fix from Apple. QA has obviously declined at Apple as this does not seem to be a complicated problem.

For those wondering if 10.9.2 fixes the BTMM problems, it does not (for me at least).